Syracuse Crunch forward Josh Green is one of those guys who likes to initiate banter in the locker room.

The only catch is that Green finds his humor works best when his targets actually understand English. That was a big problem last year, when the veteran played in Sweden.

“It was tough to do it over there. There was only one other North American on the team,” said Green. “I’d say stuff under my breath. It would take a couple of seconds to register with those guys. By then, the joke was over.”

Green doesn’t have that problem in his new surroundings this year, unless you count translation issues caused by the generation gap. Just a couple of weeks away from staring at a birthday cake alight with 33 candles, Green is the oldest player on the team and by far the most established offensive scoring threat.

Green watches teammates a dozen years younger than him mess around after practice with pretend maulings and fake fights and shakes his head. Back in 1998-99, when he was breaking in with the Kings, Green made the mistake of trading mock punches with teammate Ian Laperriere. Except that Laperriere didn’t hold back as much as he should have and clipped Green for a cut that required 13 stitches on his nose and lip.

“I don’t like to do that any more,” Green said. “I don’t need a punch in my face.”

No one sticks around in hockey as long as Green without the occasional kick in the teeth, though. Going into the 2007-08 season, Green had played in 322 regular-season NHL games. He’s played in none since then, getting just five playoff games with the Ducks in 2008-09.

The 2010-11 season represents the second time in three years he’s returned from playing overseas in an attempt to plant his stick into Anaheim’s roster. His demotion to the Crunch is another loop-around in a holding pattern for a player who doesn’t have a lot of time left in his career.

“When I signed (last summer), I had a feeling I would be starting down here,” Green said. “It’s not like it’s a huge surprise to me. Hopefully, I can get back up there. I don’t think I’ve played as well as I can the first couple of games. I’m a notoriously slow starter. I think part of it is being back in this league again. It’s a feeling out process.”

The past few seasons have been adjustment periods for Green. In 2006-07, he skated 57 games for Vancouver. Unhappy with his minutes on the Canucks, he signed to play in Austria.

A season later, he returned to the Ducks only to drift farther back in the organizational pack. A broken leg limited him to 39 games with Iowa of the AHL in 2008-09. Last year he signed to play in Sweden, a year that was memorable mostly for his wife, Krystin, giving birth to their first child, son Liam.

“He’s the best thing to happen to me in my life,” Josh said. “He’s at a good age now. He’s got a personality. He’s smiling and is starting to crawl around.”

Green planned on playing outside North America again this year, but those five postseason games the Ducks gave him two seasons ago gnawed at him. If he was good enough to play at the most important time of the year, he reasoned, he might have a few drops of NHL talent left. And Anaheim, clearly enamored with his potential contributions, made another strong free-agent pitch.

“Out of nowhere, I got an offer from Anaheim,” Green said. “Looking at the roster, I thought there was a decent chance I could stick, or be a depth guy.”

He’s starting out in that latter role, in part because his time in Sweden created some bad habits. The style there rewards offensive risk-taking and defensive miscues are just a toll to be paid for a much more wide-open game. Green said his re-entry into the AHL world will require him to do a better job limiting his turnovers.

“That’s the biggest thing here,” he said. “Teams feed on that. A lot of times it (mistakes) ends up in the back of your net.”

Green, an alternate captain for Syracuse, is trying to play it equally conservative when it comes to rolling out his humor. You don’t just come into a new locker room scattershooting the chirps, he points out. If you make fun of a teammate’s shirt, for instance, and he indeed agrees it’s sort of ugly, well, what’s the fun in that?

If there’s one edge that comes with age, one lesson that springs from experience, it’s that you have to take these things slowly and with a measured approach.

And make sure everyone is speaking the same language.

“I don’t know too many of them. I don’t want to start picking on them yet,” Green said. “We’ll get to that. It’s all about making guys comfortable, having them loose. I like guys who can give it back.”